Original Link: http://collider.com/covert-affairs-interview-sendhil-ramamurthy-tca-interview-covert-affairs/42676/
Author: Christina Radish
When a TV show gets canceled, it generally leaves the cast scrambling, looking to figure out what their next job will be. For Sendhil Ramamurthy, he was already actively shooting the new USA spy drama Covert Affairs when he found out that Heroes had been canceled.

Brought in after the pilot and introduced in Episode 2, the actor is playing Jai Wilcox, an agent with a rich family history within the walls of the CIA. During an interview at the NBC Universal portion of the Television Critics Association Press Tour, he talked about how Episode 5, airing this week, will be the episode that viewers will finally get to learn what his character is all about. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

Question: What can you say about your character on the show?

Sendhil: I’m playing a CIA operative. They’re not agents, they’re operatives. Jay is like CIA royalty. His father used to head up the CIA, and he’s living in his dad’s shadow, trying to break out.

Do you enjoy getting to speak with your own accent?

Sendhil: Yes. It’s a nice change.

How would you compare this show to Heroes?

Sendhil: It’s different. It’s a really different part for me, and a totally different experience. Heroes was a huge show with 12 cast members and giant special effects. This is more of a character-based show. There are five series regulars, in the entire thing, and my character is a slightly arrogant, cocky, smooth-talker.

Did you talk to any CIA operatives, in researching this role?

Sendhil: Not yet. I actually came on after the pilot. They shot the pilot while I was still on Heroes. And then, they decided to make some changes and I came in on the second episode.

So, you weren’t unemployed for long.

Sendhil: Actually, we found out Heroes was canceled while I was shooting the third episode, so I was never unemployed.

How were you able to do both shows at once?

Sendhil: Because it was an NBC show and I was still under contract, and they said, “We’ll let you go do this show because it’s for us.” We all knew there was a chance Heroes wouldn’t be back, so we were all covering our butts a little bit, and it worked out

What has it been like to work with this cast?

Sendhil: My job is to come into work every day and flirt with Piper Perabo. I have a very flirtatious relationship with her. Basically, what happens is that I’m called in by the new boss, who is the new head of the CIA, played by Peter Gallagher, and he tells me to get close to Annie Walker, Piper Perabo’s character, in any way that I can, to get information on her ex. There’s some question as to whether I knew her ex, which all comes into play.

Will we find out what he’s really up to before the season is done?

Sendhil: Oh, yeah. They wrote the first four episodes before I was cast, so they more or less slot me into them. I’m peppered through the first four. The fifth episode is my episode. That’s when you find out everything about Jay and why he is the way he is. You’ll learn about his background and what it is that he’s going to be doing for the whole season.

Where are you filming this show?

Sendhil: We’re in Toronto. That’s the only downside. My family is in L.A. They come up, and I’ve been flying back and forth, every other weekend.

With Heroes coming back in less than a week, IGN sat down with Sendhil Ramamurthy, aka Dr. Suresh for an interview:

Question: Your character flirted with the dark side a bit in Season 2. Was that fun for you?

Sendhil Ramamurthy: Yeah, absolutely. I kind of thought I got the darkness out of me until I found out what they were doing for me this season. It’s kind of deeply dark and twisted and completely messed up. I love it. It’s fantastic. It’s really, really dark in a comic book sense. It’s very comic book like.

Q: So the title “Villains” is not only about new characters, but exploring the darkness inside those we already know?

Ramamurthy: It is. Yeah, it’s exploring the good and the bad in everybody. A lot of the characters I think are kind of turned on their heads. They will still fundamentally be the same people that you know, but they will be in certain circumstances that cause them to behave differently than they have before.

Q: Even Sylar?

Ramamurthy: Everybody. Everybody, in some way. And a lot of them will not be ways that are very linear. You’re not expecting them, which is what makes good television.

Q: What was it like having such a long break, thanks to the writers’ strike?

Ramamurthy: As an actor, I could have done with a three week break. I didn’t necessarily need it to be this long, but I think ultimately, to be honest, it was very good for the show. The writers went back and were kind of reenergized and had re-tooled, and I knew they’d come up with something really extraordinary. Something that will equal or hopefully surpass the first season.

Q: Do you think your character will finally get a superpower?

Ramamurthy: Listen, anything is possible on this show. This character’s always been on the outside looking in at these characters and their abilities and trying to help them. It’s ultimately proved to be kind of fruitless endeavor. He keeps coming at it from different angles and he can’t quite find a way in to help these people. And this season he does – he finds a way in. But it has severe consequences. The way that he goes about things and the changes that he endures, because of how he does this. It’s kind of like this journey through this whole season so far. He will have to deal with the repercussions of his actions and it’s the most challenging thing I’ve ever done and it’s the most fun I’ve ever had.

Q: Who have you worked with this season?

Ramamurthy: I have so far worked with Dania Ramirez, Ali Larter, Adrian Pasdar, Robert Forster, who’s joining the show… I’m sure there’s more, but I’m spacing out a little bit.

Q: I liked the Chinatown thing you had going last season, with the bandaged up nose.

Ramamurthy: Did you really?

Q: Yeah, it was a fun little touch.

Ramamurthy: I was into it, except that it took like 45 minutes to put the makeup on and everything.

Q: When does Season 3 pick up in the timeline?

Ramamurthy: It picks up seconds after Nathan Petrelli gets shot in the second season. It’s directly after.
Q: How is it having an action figure?

Ramamurthy: You know what? It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty damn cool. Who doesn’t want an action figure? My daughter runs around with it. She wants to take it to school and I have to explain to her that the other daddies don’t have action figures and the kids will get jealous. It’s definitely good for the daddy ego, for sure.

Original Link: http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/interviews/a41244/sendhil-ramamurthy.html

Author: Neil Wilkes and Kris Green

Lost, 24 and Prison Break are now firmly established with audiences as the kind of unmissable television guaranteed to spark conversation at watercoolers up and down the country.

But a new contender is about to enter the ranks of the elite. Heroes, the number one new TV series in the US, crosses to UK shores on the Sci Fi channel in February.

In the coming weeks Digital Spy will be chatting to the cast of the show about the key to its success and what to expect as the series progresses.

First up is Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays Mohinder Suresh, a young Indian professor who decides to return to New York after his father – a genetics expert with some controversial theories about rapid changes in evolution – dies in a car crash. Seeking to get to the bottom of his father’s death, Mohinder immediately finds himself at the center of a mystery that runs much deeper than he had ever imagined…

How would you describe the show for someone who’s never seen it before?
“Well, it’s about groups of people all over the world who wake up one morning and discover that they have developed these extraordinary abilities. One person can fly, another can walk through walls, another can teleport, and it’s about how these people deal with these abilities that they’ve developed, and how the people around them deal with these abilities. That’s what I think makes the show interesting, because if it dealt with only the abilities themselves, the powers, it would be a one-trick pony, it would be a problem, but I think the writers have very smartly gone the way of dealing with the human reactions to these abilities.”

Could you tell us a little about how you got the part – what attracted you to the series in the first place?
“I was living in London when I got this part, I’d been living here for the past six years – I moved to LA for this show – and my agent in LA sent this script out and basically said ‘throw yourself on tape for it’. I read the script, I thought it was fantastic, but the part as it was written, was for my father, it was a 55-year-old man so I did the tape with no pressure at all, just because I thought I don’t have a chance, I don’t know why they’re seeing me. I did it, they liked the tape, they brought me out to screen test and they just kept asking me these random little things – like ‘come in, don’t shave for a few days’. Or ‘wear a suit’, or ‘just wear jeans’. It turned out they were refashioning the character around me. They made it change, they made the character the son of the character they had originally written. That’s how I got the part.”

So we nearly didn’t see you on screen, then?
“I never existed! It was never even thought that this character would actually be the son, the character was just going to be the father. For whatever reason, they changed it, and I’m eternally grateful.”

It adds another dimension to the show, to have the character with his powers and then his relationship with his father.
“I think that’s the smart thing that they’ve done, they really have made the show about relationships, and I think that’s why people have tuned in, and I think that’s what’s stopped us from being just a cult genre show. It has things the mainstream audience can be interested in – it’s got a bit of romance in it, for people who are into that, you’ve got the relationships between the single mother and her child. I think if it was just about the powers, it would get really old, really fast. The writers very smartly have shied away from that.”

What sort of reaction have you had to the show? Do you get recognized on the streets?
“The show has taken off in a way that none of us expected in a million years, and now it’s a daily occurrence. People coming up to you, while you’re walking down the street, or in the grocery store, or putting petrol in your car, whatever, you know, somebody comes up to you, or several people during the day, and it’s on everybody’s radar. Everybody comes up and says ‘really enjoy the show’. It hasn’t been intrusive yet, people are very complimentary – it’s really nice to hear, it’s always nice to hear. We all – I mean, there’s 250 people that make this show happen, so it’s great for all of us involved that people are recognizing it. Last week we got nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Drama, and to be mentioned in the same breath as 24, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and these kinds of shows, it’s certainly a validation for all of us. We couldn’t be more happy!”

It’s not yet out in the UK, so could you give us a brief summation of what happens in the first half of the show, in the first 11 episodes?
“The first eleven episodes – you’re going to be introduced to all the characters. The pilot episode is a heavy episode, there’s a lot going on. You have to keep in mind that originally, the pilot was going to be a two-hour premiere, but the network decided to split them into two, so there is a lot going on in the first episode. I think that’s actually a good thing, because you’re introduced to every character, every major series regular character apart from one, who comes in in the fifth or sixth episode. You’ll be introduced to all of the characters, you’ll see the ones who have powers, what their abilities are, and for the ones who don’t have abilities, it’s very quickly established what people’s roles are going to be. Particularly for my character – my journey starts immediately. My father’s murdered and I have to find out who murdered him, if his theory was right, and if so where are all these people – how do I find them and bring them together. That’s the goal.

“And as in any story titled ‘Heroes’, there’s got to be a bad guy. In the first eleven episodes, you’re introduced to one, possibly two bad guys. There’s an ambiguity to a lot of the characters, particularly the Niki character [played by Ali Larter]. Nobody’s all good or all bad. There’s so many facets to each of these characters – you never know when somebody’s going to go rogue – or not! I think that’s another thing that’s made the show so incredibly compelling to watch, is you never know what can happen with these characters because they’ve left everything so open for all of us. It’s so much fun for us to say, because we know we’re not going to be playing the same thing over and over again. They change it up for us and they have that luxury, because they can go into the future, or backwards, see into the past. It’s a joy as an actor to be able to do those things.”

Do you think Mohinder has that side to him, then?
“I will be sorely disappointed if I’m all good. I certainly hope that there’s some bad. He wouldn’t be a real person if there wasn’t another aspect to his life. I have every confidence that the writers will explore all facets of all characters, should we be fortunate enough to carry on for a few years. Everybody’s going to get a crack at showing completely different sides to their character, and sides they never even thought were there. We all think we know our characters like the backs of our hands, but it’s not us who know the characters, it’s the writers, and they’re the ones who know where this is all going. We don’t, we get the scripts three days before we shoot them. We cram the lines in, and we go from there.”

What power would you like to see Mohinder have, if he did?
“I guess it’s hard, because the one I would really want is flight, and that’s already gone. Mohinder’s power, maybe if he could incinerate people, that would be kind of cool. What I hate is doing green screen work – they could do it with the computer and I wouldn’t have to do green screen. I have to do so much of it in the India scenes, when there were two of me on screen. It’s hard, because you have to stand there talking to a stick with a tennis ball on top of it, that’s what you’re acting to. Maybe that, I could be a flamethrower or something.”

Which of the heroes has the best power, and why?
“I would always go with flight, I think that would be the coolest. I think that Nathan Petrelli’s power (flight) is the best one. From a purely practical point of view, living in LA, it would be great to be able to fly and not be stuck in trafic all day.”

Tim Kring said recently that he isn’t afraid to kill off major characters, so of all the characters I guess you’re the one who feels safest because you push the main narrative. Is that how you feel yourself?
“I wish I felt that way, it’s absolutely not the case. You know why I know this? Because they tell us this on a daily basis, to keep us on our toes. Nobody is safe! People are going to die, that’s the nature of the show. It can’t continue for years and years – people die off and new blood is brought in. That’s just how it’s going to be. We know that some of us are going to die – obviously, we hope it’s not us, but I can’t see this season going by and one of us not dying. Maybe they’ll surprise us and not do that, but I really can’t see it happening, because just from a practical point of view they need to bring in new blood, and they have to make it regular – people can’t just come in and do guest spots, they need to be regulars.”

Original Link: http://www.heroesrevealed.com/cast/sendhil-ramamurthy/ali-larter-and-sendhil-ramamurthy-interview/

Author: IGN TV

IGN TV: How far into production are you on Season 2?

Sendhil Ramamurthy: We’re in the middle of the third episode.

IGN TV: A year ago you were here with the show before it premiered, having no idea how it would go over. What’s it been like in the past 12 months seeing it explode the way it has?

Ramamurthy: Ali?

Larter: I’m always anxious to hear what everyone else says to these things. It has been an absolutely amazing year. What I think is so incredible is that I feel stimulated creatively, and we took a lot of risks on the show in the first season. And to be able to feel fulfilled on that side of it is for me the most important thing as an actor. But to also have this appeal, on this global level, is extraordinary. It’s extraordinary that we really touched a cord.

Ramamurthy: Bouncing off her and what she said about a global level, it really is like a global thing. I was traveling around over the hiatus and I was in France and England and Mexico, and everybody knew the show; everybody knew who we were. I mean it really is nuts. You can hope to be on a hit show, but to be on a show that’s kind of like branched out, like this has, I don’t even know!

IGN TV: Sendhil, I remember talking to you on the set before the show had debuted, and you were telling me how you and Milo [Ventimiglia] were so excited just to see the big billboard painting on the side of NBC, and were going there to take pictures of it.

Ramamurthy: [Laughs]

Larter: Oh wow!

Ramamurthy: I still have that picture on my phone!

IGN TV: I know you guys have to be very secretive, but can you talk at all about where Season 2 picks up?

Ramamurthy: Season 2! I can tell you this, Season 2 picks up four months after Season 1 ended.

[At this point Larter taps Ramamurthy on his shoulder and nods towards some nearby girls]

Larter: These girls just looked over and went “Oh my god! Oh my god, there he is!” I swear!

Ramamurthy: [Laughs] The best thing about the show is standing next to her.

Larter: [Miming fans] “Ahhh!” Sendhil, do the girls come up to you and fawn? Because as a girl, you know guys aren’t like “Oh, you’re so lovely.” They’re like “How you doing?” or they hit on you.

IGN TV: But the girls get into more of the shrieking thing, right?

Ramamurthy: Listen, they pretty much leave me alone, because I’m mostly out and about with my wife. But a few come up.

Larter: And she’s got a big ol’ ring on her finger.

Ramamurthy: Yeah, exactly.

IGN TV: So where do we find your characters as we join them four months later?

Ramamurthy: Right now I guess I can say my character is undercover. He’s grown a big old set of balls. He’s generally kind of done a 180 from the first season, which is exciting as an actor to play something new.

IGN TV: Ali, last season you were playing two different characters, but Niki seemed to have integrated Jessica and come out as the dominant personality by the end of the year.

Larter: There’s definitely been an integration, and you know, it’s all Niki now. Just Niki; that’s all you get, which is great. I think that it’s about focusing it on the things that worked last year, and really kind of tightening up the storyline.

IGN TV: Last year I learned from some of your costars that Masi [Oka] is particularly good at prying information about what’s to come out of the producers. Do you guys make attempts to do the same thing?

Larter: We get nothing!

Ramamurthy: Yeah, I get nothing. I’ve kind of stopped trying. I kind of just go with the flow and you trust them, and you just see what happens.

IGN TV: You guys haven’t had a substantial scene together, right?

Ramamurthy: No.

Larter: You know, it’s coming now!

IGN TV: Oh really? Any hints on how that occurs?

Larter: We don’t really know exactly yet. We just know that we’re going to be coming together a bit.

Though he can’t fly, read minds, or stop time, few fans would argue that Mohinder Suresh isn’t an integral part of Heroes. For one thing, it’s Suresh’s quest to continue his father’s research into the mysteries of “advanced evolution” that drives the show (it’s no coincidence that Suresh is the one who narrates every episode). And for Sendhil Ramamurthy, the Texas-bred actor who plays him, the character of Suresh has done something even more important than saving the cheerleader: It saved him from years of dealing with Hollywood’s continuing inability to cast Indian actors in roles that aren’t variations on the stereotypical terrorists or convenience store clerks. The son of two physicians (his sister is also a doctor) and a classically trained performer who studied with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Ramamurthy came very close to abandoning acting altogether until Heroes came along, and with it the opportunity to create one of television’s most fully realized Indian characters—not to mention being in one of the most popular shows on the planet. Just prior to the premiere of Heroes’ second season, The A.V. Club spoke with Ramamurthy about breaking those race barriers, why he doesn’t have “superpower penis envy,” and what viewers can expect from Suresh’s surprising turn this season.

The A.V. Club: How did your parents feel about you being an actor as opposed to following in the family footsteps?

Sendhil Ramamurthy: They were less than thrilled at first. [Laughs.] I was pre-med, so I was going to go into the family business more or less. But I came to my senses, luckily, and backed out, and decided to go to drama school. Now they’re happy that I’m playing a doctor on TV at least. And once they kind of got their head around the whole thing, they were really supportive. They paid for drama school, and when I was with the Royal Shakespeare Company they flew out to England to see all of my plays. Of course, now that I’m on TV, they don’t understand what the hell Heroes is all about. Every Tuesday after the show airs I have to have the Tuesday morning conversation and explain to them what happened the night before.

AVC: One thing they should be happy about is you’ve helped break stereotypes for Indian actors on TV. Do you think there’s still an ingrained racism in the way Hollywood writes and casts for Indian actors?

SR: I think so. There isn’t any question about that. I’ve managed to luck out that they’ve given me a fully rounded character on the show, but in general, yeah. And you know, now more than ever I get everything “Indian” that’s ever written. It all comes across my desk. Since Heroes started I’ve probably had about 15 or 16 film scripts sent to me with Indian characters, and out of those maybe one was good. And the depressing thing is, they’re all being written by Indians! Like, how many more scripts can there be about an arranged marriage or an abusive husband? It’s the same thing over and over again. I think that Indian writers think this is the kind of thing that people want to see, and it’s kind of sad. I literally fling those scripts across the room as soon as I start reading them. [Laughs.]

AVC: You’ve said that you refuse to even audition for those kinds of roles. If Heroes hadn’t come along, where do you think you’d be right now?

SR: Literally, I had bought my GMAT book, and I was going to take the GMAT and go to business school. I was ready to chuck it all in. I couldn’t do those parts. I would just rather do something else. And then this thing fell into my lap. It was bizarre. I was unemployed, and I had just had a baby, and I needed to do something. I thought, “Well, I’ve given it more or less a good crack, and at least I had the chance to do some really great theater.” Film and TV-wise, it just wasn’t happening. I did some guest spots, and I did a series in England and stuff like that, but nothing that I was overwhelmingly proud of, or that had given me a lot of notoriety, or that even stretched me as an actor. Heroes came along and everything changed after that. Now I’m getting a lot of scripts that have nothing to do with being Indian, and I think that’s amazing. I’m really happy about that.

AVC: Is there anything you’ve signed to?

SR: Nothing I can talk about. There’s something in the works that I hope can work out, but it’s tough with the shooting schedule because we shoot for nine months of the year. So I have to find something that I love—and if it’s “Indian” it has to be something I can do morally, something I will allow myself to do—and the scheduling has to work out to those three months. This thing I’m hoping will work out now, it’s not an Indian movie. The character’s name is “Miles.” I really, really, really want to do it, but so far the dates don’t work. We’ll see.

AVC: You just completed a Heroes world tour.

SR: It’s really been a whirlwind, these past three weeks. They’ve been insane. But fun, so much fun. You spend most of your time as an actor unemployed, so you’re not going to hear me complaining that I haven’t had a day off in three weeks.

AVC: What are Heroes fans like overseas?

SR: Much more vocal. [Laughs.] Me and three other castmates did Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Tokyo was okay, because it hasn’t come out yet in Japan, so we were really under the radar. The only people who stopped us were American and Australian tourists. In Hong Kong it’s come out, but it’s on a cable channel right now. We still had some paparazzi and people following us around. In Singapore the whole season has aired on normal television, and we went to a fan event where they told us it would be like 500 to 800 people and we got there and there were just under 8000. That was freaky. It was scary but cool. These people screaming for you, you’re kind of hoping they don’t kill you too. The group that went to Europe all had the same response. It’s great to see that the show hasn’t become just this genre, sci-fi show. It really has become this global thing.

AVC: It definitely has its genre following, though. Are you already sick of answering fanboy questions about whose power could defeat whose and so on?

SR: [Laughs.] Yeah, that segment of our fanbase really does take it all pretty seriously. You just have to laugh at it. You also have to respect it, because without them we wouldn’t have a show. They’re our hardcore fanbase that we can always depend on. It’s hard for me because they ask me these questions, and it’s literally things I’ve never thought of before. They ask me comic book questions—I’ve never read a comic book in my life. I read Archie when I was a kid. I never read X-Men, or Superman, or Spider-Man, or any of the other “mans,” so I never have the answers to these questions. I’m not a Trekkie. I’ve never seen the first three Star Wars movies. It’s just not really my genre. I just politely defer to the two castmates on the show who are sci-fi people and let them take the question.

AVC: And who are they?

SR: Masi [Oka] and—actually, it’s just Masi. He knows everything about comic books. He knows everything about… manga, I think it’s called? The first time somebody asked me about manga, I thought he said “mango.” I honestly had never even heard that term before. I was like, “Why are you asking me about fruit?” That didn’t work out so well for me.

AVC: Being both a critical and commercial hit in your debut season puts a huge amount of expectation on the follow-up. How is the show dealing with that?

SR: It starts out very much like the first season with a big, sprawling story—and it’s a new story—but then starts to change very quickly afterwards. We’re more unified. There were so many separate stories going on last season, and now we come into contact much quicker in the second season. A lot of our stories intersect, and I’m working with a lot more of the regulars than I did last season, which is great. We’ll be doing scenes where there will be five or six of us in the one scene acting with each other, and that never happened until the last two or three episodes of the first season.

AVC: All of the heroes working together? Sounds like the Justice League.

SR: Nooo. There will be no Justice League. [Laughs.] Far from it, actually. There’s some antagonism going on. It’s a lot more exciting, I think. I like the way that the second season is going a lot more than the first season.

AVC: One of the big—and only—complaints from last season was that the finale was really anticlimactic. Did you agree with that?

SR: I understand the criticism, because there was such a build-up to the fight between Sylar and Peter. And I think people were probably expecting a lot more from that, special effects-wise. They were expecting more bang for the buck, and I can totally understand that. But from the story’s point of view, because we start with a whole new story in the second season, last season’s story had to be wrapped up, to tie up everyone’s storyline in a way that didn’t leave dangling ends. This season we’re not going to have one overarching storyline. The first 23 episodes of last season were “Volume One,” and this season the first episode through the eleventh episode are “Volume Two” and that’s going to wrap up at the end of the eleventh episode. Then a new story starts “Volume Three,” and “Volume Four” ends the season. We’re telling more compact stories to avoid having a 23-episode build-up that’s inevitably going to be a letdown for some people.

AVC: How much are you sworn to secrecy on scripts? How much of the story do you know at any given time?

SR: We get one episode at a time, and the first page of every episode that we get says, [Reads from script.] “In accordance with the production, there is zero tolerance for revealing script pages or ideas contained herein to any person outside the production…Remember: We are a family, and a family is only as strong as the secrets we keep.” That’s the first page of every single script.

AVC: Fair enough. So what can you tell us about the upcoming season?

SR: The overall story is that all of the main characters are spread out and getting on with their lives—or trying to, anyway. If the first season was about ordinary people becoming extraordinary, this season is about everybody trying to be ordinary. Everyone wants to be as normal and under-the-radar as possible. My character is the most changed. They really flipped Suresh and did a 180—which I’m really happy about. He’s a man of action this season. I think it’s really going to shock the audience. It’s one of those things where they’ll probably be yelling at the TV when they see some of the stuff that Suresh does. He’s still the same person that he was at the core, but there’s a different thing driving him, and he’s working with and coming into contact with old and new characters who nobody ever thought that Suresh would be associating with. It’s kind of a bold thing for the writers to do, to flip the character like that. Hopefully it works. I think he’s a much smarter character than he was last season. There’s a lot less of Suresh being completely in the dark and every other character and the audience knowing what’s going on except him.

AVC: Yes, a lot of last season, Mohinder—for a scientist, especially, someone who’s supposed to be naturally skeptical—seemed especially trusting. Some would even say gullible.

SR: [Laughs.] Yeah, I think he’s learning his lesson, but that’s always going to be his Achilles’ heel. At heart, Mohinder is the good in the world, and he will always see the good in people. That could end up being his undoing, or it could end up being something great. He has a questioning nature, but he also wants to believe that the best is true in everybody. Sometimes that really doesn’t work out so well for him. I do think he’s learning, not only about other people but he’s learning so much about himself. There’s a lot of introspective moments, actually, in the first nine episodes that we’ve shot so far where he sees who he is. He may not like some of the stuff that he’s seeing. He certainly doesn’t like some of the stuff he’s doing. Not only will the audience be shocked, but I think Mohinder is really shocked at what he’s able to do. I don’t know if he even knew some of the stuff that he was capable of doing this season. It’s kind of nuts. I have to say, when I read what they had in store for him, I wasn’t sure. It’s really different. But I think it’s going to connect with the audience because it is so different, and because there’s a damn good reason for everything.

AVC: Does the major change in his motivations have something to do with caring for Molly?

SR: Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of scenes with Adair Tishler. She’s great. Basically, Greg Gunberg and I are like—what is it?—Two Men And A Baby. My character is actually traveling a lot—I’ve been in four or five different countries within the context of the story, and we’re only in the ninth episode—so I’m away a lot from Molly, but she is absolutely at the core of all of the changes that are occurring with Mohinder.

AVC: Last season it was revealed that Mohinder’s blood is the cure for “Shanti’s virus.” Does that become a major plot point?

SR: I would say that’s the major thing in “Volume Two.” It’s all about Shanti’s virus, and obviously Mohinder’s blood is very important to that.

AVC: Would you consider that to be Mohinder’s superpower, that he has blood that can cure people?

SR: I don’t look at it as a superpower. When I first started the show, it was pitched as a show about superpowers, and I was like, “This sucks. I’m the only guy on the fucking show who doesn’t have a superpower. This totally blows.” But now I’m actually really glad that Mohinder isn’t flying and running through walls and stuff, because I think it makes him more relatable to the audience. I wouldn’t call it a superpower, but I don’t know what I would call it. A genetic anomaly? I’ve thought about it a lot. He was more or less born to cure his sister’s virus, and that’s why his parents decided to have him. He’s been produced to do something. I like that about him. While I wouldn’t say it’s a superpower, it’s certainly something that drives him.

AVC: Considering you’re one of the only cast members who doesn’t have a superpower—besides Jack Coleman—do ever find it emasculating?

SR: There’s some penis envy going on. [Laughs.] No, we’re all very aware of the nature of the show and the mythology, and it’s something that [creator] Tim Kring talks about all the time. We all—and certainly Jack and I—see our place within the mythology. I see myself as searching for good in this world—as well as being the narrator on top of it. I’m kind of everybody’s eyes. I don’t really try and change it. I don’t hang out in the writers’ room and campaign for a power.

AVC: The fact that you’re the narrator does seem to hint that Mohinder has some sort of omniscience.

SR: It does, and I’ve purposely never asked where the voice-over is coming from. I don’t know if it’s coming from a book that he’s written, or if it’s a book that his father wrote, like a diary. I have a lot of theories in my head what the real answer is, but I think only Tim Kring knows and I’ve never, ever asked him. I think there will come a point where I’ll want to know. Whether he’ll tell me or not is a different story. Right now I’m okay with not knowing.

AVC: Does it give you a feeling of job security? Like, your character’s probably not going to die anytime soon since he’s the narrator.

SR: Um, I wouldn’t say that. [Laughs.] There are a lot of people who can talk. They can change narrator midstream. I’d certainly like to think that, but the reality is I don’t really see it as job security. I do see it as another way my character is important to the story. I think it makes this character more and more valuable to the show, and that can never be a bad thing. But can they write an episode where Suresh gets two bullets to the head? Yeah. Of course they can.